Parents,
My daughter wants to go on pre-med track. The courses she is looking for Junior year are AP Calc, AP Bio, AP Psych, AP Lit, Honors Spanish and US History. That accounts for 6 periods and if she did 7th, she has been invited to tutor and that would count towards Academic leadership. There’s also another option, which is Sports Med. Questions
I am extremely worried about the load but she tells me this is normal for Junior year and there are kids in her school
doing 5+ AP courses. Is this normal?
Is Academic leadership good to have on transcript?
As she wants to go on pre-med track, is it better to do Sports Med instead of Academic leadership?
This is is normal for honor kids. AP Calc, AP Bio and AP Lit are tough, but she has balanced those with the rest of the courses (AP Psych is not too hard).
I don’t think it makes a difference one way or another.
For pre-med, it also does not make a difference. I would only suggest Sports Med if she wants to get exposed to that area and see if she is interested in it.
I also highly suggest that she start volunteering in a hospital or the like so she is exposed to patients and see if she likes it.
I think 'academic leadership ’ will e better for her, especially if she can volunteer at a hospital. If she can volunteer it’ll be much better than sports medicine, which is likely ‘anatomy’ lite.
Beware that 'premed ’ has nothing to do with actual medicine academically. The students take first year biology with biology majors and must rank in the top 10%, they take general chemistry with chemistry majors and must rank at the top too, they take English, sociology, psychology, physics,…beung pr med is more a personal Decision to rank high in every class taken. The 'medical’par is in ec 's (you need to volunteer, or be an emt…) And they can major in anything, English, Spanish, CS, music, philosophy, statistics…
As opposed to saying premed at this point, consider the rationale for taking a challenging junior (or senior) year as foundational in nature, that is, D uses her courses to further develop skills (eg reading, writing, critical thinking, verbal/communication skills, test prepping/taking, etc) that will help her no matter what pathway she ultimately goes down… There’s really nothing premed about high school other than making oneself as ready as possible for college. She doesn’t have to overload herself to do that, She should try to have a life beyond academics.
As far as D’s course load being normal, I think that’s student dependent. S took AP Physics, AP US History, AP Eng, H precalc, a DE course at a local CC his junior year, played varsity sport, had a great social life. He got into his top choice for college, he’s an MD. Good luck to D.
